


It's Actually Not From Japan

by Edge_Bread



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz, Be More Chill - Ned Vizinni, Welcome to Hell - All Media Types
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Help, Human squip, Physical Abuse, Senior year, did not think this through, ghost au, ghost squip (bare with me), i have an unhealthy obsession with the squip, redemption for the squip, scratch that everyone is gay, some stuff from the book but mostly the musical, some violence, squip is gay, started off ironic but i got way too into it, teenage squip
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2018-12-31 18:12:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12138234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edge_Bread/pseuds/Edge_Bread
Summary: It's the summer after the year of the Squip. Jeremy and the gang have gotten a much needed fresh start to their senior year of high school. Little do they know something much larger is brewing at B. Bowl Town bowling alley.





	1. Chapter One: Jeremy

Jeremy Heere  
Mr. Gretch  
Calculus 1  
September 1, 2015

…

Wait, no. That isn’t right.

1 September 2015

That’s better. It’s easy to forget things as basic as proper MLA formatting when you've had a supercomputer dictating your essays for the entirety of your junior year. If Jeremy missed one thing about that bastard pseudo-Keanu it was the ability to completely zone out in all of his classes and still ace every exam. The normal, hellish life of an average Calculus class, however, was a small price to pay to dissolve the remains of The Squip in his blood. 

He chuckled to himself thinking about what The Squip would say to him now. “Why would you wear that shirt?!” “You should be wearing stronger deodorant!” “Why are you setting up an MLA document in a calculus class?!”

Oh. Jeremy closed his computer and rested his head on his desk.

As he felt himself slipping into a lighter stage of the sleep cycle he heard a snicker from behind him. The past year had changed many of his friends but something will always remain constant. One of those being Jenna Roland gossiping with her friends during class. Jeremy would normally be grinding his teeth at the loud squeals and gasps and giggles of the girls, but he found himself way too tired to care. 

As Jenna went on about the summer escapades of Elizabeth, Jeremy’s attention was directed to the door of the class. A familiar set of headphones caught his attention. Michael!

As soon as Michael walked in, Rich got up from his desk next to Jeremy and moved the other back corner of the room. While he isn’t a saint by any means, the “new” Rich Goranski was a cool enough guy to know that it would a crime against humanity not to let Michael and Jeremy sit next to each other. Saying “thank you” would’ve been way too weird, but the smile Rich and Jeremy exchanged as he moved was more than enough to show his gratitude. 

Michael rushed to Jeremy’s side with the incomparable energy of, well, Michael Mell. Michael shoved his headphones down from his ears to his neck and smiled at Jeremy.

“So how was your summer man?”

Jeremy wasn’t exactly sure what to say. In all honesty, it kinda sucked. It was endless days and sleepless nights of textbook notes to prepare him for the AP classes the Squip had qualified him for. He didn’t quite have the heart to turn them down after seeing the excitement and pride that lit up his father’s face every time he walked into the kitchen to see preparing for the upcoming classes. Thankfully, as a senior he didn’t technically even need to take math classes again, and Middle Borough High School only taught up Calculus 1, but he figured it would be nice to retake the class since he truthfully didn’t learn a single thing that year, and college is only going to be building on it. Either way, he was happy to have a class with his best friend.

“It was good, I guess. Busy. How about you?”

“The best!” said Michael, eyes glittering. Jeremy got so lost in Michael’s elaborate summer he didn’t catch himself drifting off to sleep.


	2. Chapter Two: Simon

Shit.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. 

“Simon Jones. Get the ever living fuck into my office this instant if you want to see another day on this planet”

The young man flinched at the mention of his real name. Nobody ever uses telepathic communication with boss because nobody has lived much longer after to tell the tale. This was it, he guessed. He’s toast. He had failed his one and only mission. He shuffled his feet up to the room behind the bar at B. Bowl Town bowling alley.

Inside of the small room sat a skinny, lanky man at a desk. Well, at least he once was a skinny, lanky man. Like the rest of the bowling alley’s occupants at three in the morning, he was a ghost-like spirit, only visible to the approximately 40 other ghost that haunted the building. He didn’t look up from the computer on his desk. The computer was not plugged in.

“Um...hi...boss.” The young man known to only himself and apparently boss as Simon stuttered out. Before he could process what was happening he felt a sudden extreme pain in his cheek and nose. The force sent him flying backward, phasing through a few boxes but not knocking anything over. He tried to get up but found boss standing over him, not looking happy. He sat on the floor, almost curling into a ball.

“Now, Jones. We have a few rules here. I bust my ass off every day for three hundred years and when I give you the fucking honor of being in my presence I don’t expect a fucking ‘um...um...um...oh howdy hi boss’ from a lowlife like you!” Ghosts can shapeshift into different shapes and mimic different voices. Simon despised when people did that to mock him. Keanu Reeves’ amazing voice was only allowed to come from Keanu himself and Simon.   
Boss clenches his fists like he was going to hit him again but decided not to and went back behind his desk.

“Now let’s see…” Boss was shuffling a file of papers accounting every detail of Simon’s life, along with his nightmarish afterlife. Simon felt very violated. He attempted to scurry off the floor and sit in the chair in front of boss’ desk, but was met with a growl followed by a “You will do only as you are instructed to!”

Simon awkwardly sat on the floor. He stared down at his...erm...Keanu’s thumbs as boss shuffled papers. Even though he no longer has a physical form, he can still admire his own imaginary manicure. 

“Sit on the chair, unless you’re actually secretly a dog.” boss ordered.

“Let’s see, you went in as a squip for a Jeremy Heere?”

“Y-yes sir.” Simon was known to be a charming, confident ghost. That’s why he was chosen to be a Squip in the first place. The boss was the kind of person that could turn anyone into a stuttering mess,

“And I see you failed the basic task you were supposed to do.”

“Um...yes sir...but you see this ti-” Simon’s explanation was cut off after a bowling shoe flew off the table nearly broke his nonexistent jaw. He immediately regretted his choice.

“You will respond to me with ‘yes sir’ or ‘no sir.’ Anything else and I ought to kick you out of your little oasis here right now.”

‘Kick out’ was a nice way of saying being reported to far higher up authorities and being sent to some unknown afterlife for a more permanent death for ghosts. If Simon’s life was anything to go off of he was undoubtedly going straight to the worsts parts of hell. 

The truth is being a ghost in today’s society was illegal. Ghosts live in secret, in bowling alleys and abandoned warehouses. Hauntings and possessions will generally get the higher-ups on your ass before you can say “boo!” Whether or not you become a ghost is like winning the lottery. Every time a new person dies, the dice are rolled. One in a million. Of course, that mean about 50 new ghosts on the earth every year. Simon was one of them. 

“You fucked up real bad, Simon Jones. You’re walking on thin ice here. Too bad the ice already broke. It’s time to drown.”

Simon had no idea what the hell Boss was talking about. 

“I reported you to a...friend. Instead of just dragging you over to his place last night like he should’ve, he decided that he wants to come down to the human world and speak with you privately. 

Simon sat in silence, not daring to risk running his mouth again.

“He’s waiting outside.” Boss got up from his desk and walked over to the door. “Don’t move your lazy ass.”

Simon sat unnaturally still in the chair. If you had lungs, he would’ve been holding his breath. After a minute, a much taller and much thinner man strolled into the room. He had bright red hair and a burgundy suit. He carried himself like he had the world’s best squip in his head. He certainly wasn’t a ghost, but he was way too comfortable around ghosts to be a human. He sat on the chair and looked over Simon carefully.

“Do you know why I gave humans squips, Mr. Jones?”

“No, sir.” Simon quickly said.

“Please, Mephistopheles, not sir.”

“Um...no. I don’t know, Mephistopheles.” That’s way more of a mouthful than just Sir, but Simon wasn’t ready to negotiate with this guy about names.

“Come on, take your best guess. No wrong answers.”

“Um...so that ghosts can meet new people and stay up to date with trends of the time?”

“Ha, that is one of the wrongest answer’s I’ve heard in my life!” Mephistopheles chuckled out. He had a thick Brooklyn accent. It reminded Simon of his grandfather back when he was a human.

“Why did you do it then?” Simon asked with genuine curiosity. He felt a lot more comfortable around this guy than he did around Boss.

“Have you ever noticed that nearly every person who get’s squiped kills themselves?”

“Um...yes si...MEPHistopheles.”

“Now, here where I work, we have a...quota that needs to be filled. We normally have a plentiful supply of demons to annoy potential residents into suicide. But just in case we end up in a bit of a dry spell, squips here on earth always keep ‘em coming.”

“So what do you want me to do?” Simon asked, unsure of why he was getting this talk.

“Your buddy there...Jeremy I believe...is still, let’s just say, very much alive.” Simon nodded his head in shame. “Normally they find a way to kill themselves trying to kill their squip. Of course, we know that’s bullshit. Once they drink that mountain dew red and dissolve the pill and lose their ability to see and hear you, you simply wait until someone takes another enchanted pill to see and hear you and move onto them.”

“I...um...lost my pill.”

“I have it right here.” Mephistopheles waves the minty green pill in midair with no hands like any ghost would.

“So you like...manage your own hideout.”

“Ha, nope. I oversee all the American hideouts. Actually all the hideouts.”

“Wait you’re the dev-”

“MEPHISTOPHELES” He interrupted, clearly very offended.

“Okay, okay. What do you need me to do?”

“I need you to get this Jeremy boy to...you know...punch his own ticket.”

“I need to squip him again?”

“Dear god no, you’re terrible at that!” Simon could feel his blood run to his cheeks, as impossible as that was. “Simon, you are going back in as a human.”

“WHAT!?!?” Simon’s voice came out a lot louder than he had anticipated. He talked in a hoarse whisper to compensate. “How would that even work?”

“You go to his school as another teenager. Become his friend, bully and abuse him to no end, betray him, and boom. Easy. You’ve done it before apparently.” Well he didn’t need to be so condescending about that fiasco 

“What’s in it for me?” Simon leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed, bearing his signature smirk to hide the smile and excitement brewing inside of him.

“You, my friend, will be able to kiss goodbye to this bowling alley for good. I need a new secretary in the underworld. Organize some papers, make some calls, invade some dreams. It’s a lot more comfortable there than in this dump.”

“And what happens if I fail?” Simon asked.

“Welp, then you get….kicked out...if you know what I mean.”

Simon hesitated for a second, he knew what he needed to do to get out and get whatever he could call a life back. He stretched out his hand for Mephistopheles.

“You have yourself a deal!” Simon gleefully said.

“Good choice.”

The second their hands touched, everything went black.


	3. Chapter Three: Jeremy and Simon

Jeremy was awoken by a loud clang in his closet, followed by a short yelp and few groans. An introducer? No way, he would recognize that voice anywhere. No. No way this was happening. He was dreaming. Yes, he was dreaming and having a weird false awakening and this was his conscience trying to personify his anxieties about the upcoming school year in the form of the squip showing back up. Yep, that sounds about right.

No it didn’t sound about right. This was too real to be a dream, and Jeremy would know. He had tried and failed at lucid dreaming many times and he knows for a fact that he is 100% awake and that there is a strange man in his closet that sounds like Keanu Reeves. 

It was a criminal or a demon or...on the off chance that he wasn’t absolutely fucking insane, the squip, Jeremy grabbed a rather large physics textbook to defend himself with. With a textbook in one hand and a flashlight in the other, Jeremy started inching towards the closet.

As soon as Jeremy stepped out of bed, all noise at all stopped. Maybe he was just hallucinating before due to lack of sleep. Yeah.

Part of Jeremy’s gut knew this wasn’t right. Something was up. He needed to check the closet. 

Jeremy inched towards the closet so slowly he could make a snail laugh. He very quietly opened the door. Aside from a few shirts and a pile of dirty laundry the closet was completely empty. Jeremy shined the flashlight back and forth a few more times just to be sa-- 

A strong hand pulled him back by his T shirt while another hand clasped over his mouth. 

 

Simon

 

“Mmhmmm mhmmm!”

“Yep it’s me. This is as uncomfortable for me as it is for you, Jeremy.” Having actual audible noises coming out of his mouth was much weirder of a feeling than Simon could remember. He tried to sound intimidating but just ended up sounding fumbly and goofy. 

“MHHHHHH” Jeremy was trying to scream but he couldn’t open his mouth. This is not a good first start to get the kid hyper-attached to him.

“I’ll let go, as long as you promise not to scream or call the cops.” 

What seemed like an agreeing “mrrrrrr” came from Jeremy. The second Simon had released him, Jeremy stumbled backwards onto his bed in disbelief.

“No...wait...no...what...how….what….”

“Just shut up Jeremy. Yes I am back but I’m not here to torment you make you cool or anything like that so please do calm yourself down.”

“What the hell! You should be dead, or gone, or whatever! What are you doing in my house!” Jeremy whisper yelled.

“That is...erm...classified for the time being.”

“What do you want right now, asshole!”

Simon didn’t think through this far. Shit. Uh…

“I think it is better if we just forget everything that happened and start over.” He stretched out his right hand. “My name is Simon. What is your name?”

“My name is get to the fucking point before I get my dad’s gun out of the garage and make you WISH you stayed the hell out of my head and my life.”

“Okay okay, it is complicated. I’ll tell you tomorrow morning.”

“No.”

“No?”

“GET THE HELL OUT OF MY HOUSE!” Jeremy’s eyes started to swell up with tears. “GET OUT! NO FUCKING WAY I’M SEEING YOU IN THE MORNING! I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN EVER!”

“Jeremy, you’re going to wake up your father.”

“So...so what!? He...just please get out.”

“I don’t have a place to stay…”

“That’s what I call not my problem.”

“Jeremy please…” 

“I said get out.” Simon had never seen Jeremy acting like this in the months they had spent together. He figured trying to reason with him was no use. It would be morning in only an hour anyways. He took a deep breath.

“I am sorry I woke you, Jeremy. He said and calmly walked down the creaky staircase. Jeremy was still sitting on his bed, he looked like he had just seen a ghost, which held some truth he supposed. Well...not anymore.

Normal “senses” were not something Simon was used to. Even the feeling of his clothes brushing and folding and rubbing against his skin felt bizarre. He stumbled and limped when he walked, like a toddler taking their first steps.

He had certainly been able to feel pain as a ghost, but only inflicted by other ghosts. Now he could feel the lingering sensation in his shoulder from when he fell from what felt like 30 feet into Jeremy’s closet. His shoulders, tailbone, and the back of his head felt the most sore, and he had bitten his tongue pretty hard. 

He completely forgot what it was like to be hungry. He was hungry, starving. He had a pounding headache. The body he was given must’ve been completely empty because he felt like at any moment he was going to collapse.

He sat down on a bench in a bus stop. He looked down at his watch, a particle element of his favorite form, though as a ghost keeping human time was rather silly. Five in the morning. He couldn’t remember feeling this tired ever. The humidity and heat from the late summer New Jersey sun was not helping the drowsiness. 

He put his head in his hands on the bench. He wanted to curl up in a ball and cry. Why him? Tina was probably still around somewhere, certainly nowhere that Mephistopheles couldn’t retrieve her. Some lunatic insisted that she look like kermit the frog during her service to him, then went insane and burned down a house just to get rid of her. Nobody had heard from her since.

Seriously, why did they send him? There's probably thousands of ghosts who have acted as squips in New Jersey alone.

“Because, I like you. You remind me of myself, kid.”

Next to Simon on the bench was the only person who would ever call an 80 year old man in a 50 year old’s body kid. Maybe it wasn’t the absolute most outrageous thing since he did die when he was 22 and his maturity hadn't extended far past that, but still.

“Oh, um hi Mephistopheles!” he said, startled.

“I was here to give you a pep talk, but clearly you have a few issues here.”

“Yeah…”

“Well first off, no way you’re going to a high school looking like that!”

“Oh, ha. I didn’t even think about that.”

“Let’s fix you up.” Mephistopheles led Simon down a dark alleyway behind a dumpster. There were no people in sight, but it was best to play this one safe.

 

Jeremy

 

What just happened? There was a...not a; THE squip in his room. He tried to kidnap him, Jeremy thinks. Or not. Jeremy doesn’t know. The guy who tormented him, nearly killed him, sent him to therapy for months, ripped his friendship group to shreds for him to glue back together himself, was back and ready to get revenge. 

What...what even though? He’s a computer. Granted, a supercomputer but a computer nonetheless. He should be as functional as an iphone that had been at the bottom of a swimming pool for one summer. He’s...this is impossible. What if he’s dead, is this what hell is? No...maybe. He could’ve died in his sleep. His neighborhood could’ve been nuked or someone could’ve stabbed him. Shit, Jeremy wasn’t ready for death. No, think reasonably, of course, you’re not dead. Okay. Deep breaths. 

The time is 5:03 in the morning. The squip is back but is not in his head, judging by the empty hangers that had fallen from his closet. The squip was roaming the New Jersey streets. He’s here. He’s...human? No, no way. Maybe during lunch, someone had squiped his drink. He hadn’t drank mountain dew once since last year for obvious but maybe it could be activated with any? Yeah that's probably what happened. This time he knows. He’s prepared. He’ll have some Mountain Dew Red first thing in the morning. For now, he should go to sleep. 

“Shutdown.” Jeremy cautiously told the floor. Jeremy noticed no difference, but it was best to play this one safe.


	4. Chapter Four: Simon

“This might hurt...well...a lot.”

“Wha-AAAAAAAA” screeching pain like never before electrocuted itself down Simons spine and into all of his bones. What the hell is Mephistopheles doing. Simon could feel his bone structure warping and distorted like play dough. His skin tightened like a tissue about to be torn in half at any second. The heat and humidity disappeared completely as Simon could feel himself get icy cold chills, followed by intense burning sensations, then back to chills. He fell onto the pavement of the alley almost immediately. He tried not to scream as to not draw any unwanted attention to himself. In all honesty the only sound he could muster was a few wheezes. 

“Come on, stay with me.” Mephistopheles said with a slightly panicked voice. “Stay awake, you’re doing fine.” 

Simon tried, oh god he tried. Shapeshifting as a ghost was as painless as just picturing yourself in a different form. He tried to control his breathing and focus on the dawn in the sky above him. Simon had a feeling that every meeting he had with this guy would end in him going unconscious. This one was no exception.

…

 

Simon woke up feeling groggy, but much better than last night. He felt much more energized and rested. Even though he could not recall what or when he felt like he had eaten a good meal. He was wearing new clothes, a more casual variation of his typical suit; an open button down shirt with a pair of jeans and sneakers. He could feel the crust that had built up in his eyes while he was sleeping. He was sitting upright on something some sort of bench. It was loud and bumpy and smelled like spilled Gatorade. He was on a school bus.

He would recognize this bus anywhere. Bus 6. It was the bus Jeremy and Michael used to walk to together after school when Jeremy didn’t have play practice. At least before he turned on optic nerve blocking. Funny how the pill allows such specific control of the body. Simon really had no problems with Michael himself as a person, but he was a major obstacle in the way of allowing Jeremy to climb to the top of the school’s social food chain. Nothing personal, business is business. 

Simon was sitting alone in the most middle seat on the bus. Most students had congregated to the back, while a few of the quiet ones confined to large paperback books and even larger headphones found silent sanctuary in the front. Nobody sat in the middle, except him apparently. Well him and...wait a second.

“How are you feeling?” Mephistopheles asked from the seat across from him. He was smirking like the question was a big inside joke he wasn’t in on.

“Good...can they see me?” Simon’s voice had stayed identical, thank god. Of course, they can see him. Simon didn’t really know what to say.

“Yes.”

“Can they see you?”

“No. You’re talking to yourself,” Mephistopheles said like he’s said it to a thousand people before.

Simon blushed out of embarrassment and pulled his backpack to his chest. He tried to look for Michael in the front where Simon assumed he would be. Perhaps he could start some sort of conversation with Michael since he already had a good understanding of his interests and hobbies. Michael was nowhere to be found.

“He drives to school now,” Mephistopheles said.

“How can you-”

“I can see, hear, and smell your thoughts, just like you can when someone has an active pill inside of them. Thought that was common knowledge.”

So we can communicate telepathically? 

“Yep.”

Interesting.

“Indeed it is.”

So you’re like my squip now?

“Nope, this is for you to figure out, not me. I’ll leave you on your own. I see everything, I’ll come....erm...fetch you if there’s an emergency. Hopefully, that is not the case.”

Before Simon could process that sentence he was gone in a poof of orange smoke. It smelled like Dorito powder. Simon coughed a few times, one of the weird consequences that came with having lungs.

The bus screeched to a halt, throwing Simon and his backpack out of their seat. Physics didn’t really apply to ghosts.

The entire road was filled with about ten other buses. Little ways down the street was a large brick building known as Middle Borough High School. You would think it would be a middle school, or at least in the middle of a town named Borough. The view of the menacing building from the bus evoked images of a run-down prison before those of a high school. Simon was unsure what to do next. He wasn’t enrolled in the school, so he couldn’t just waltz into whatever class he wanted. 

“Yes you are.”

Simon’s heart skipped a beat. He was always very easy to startle. 

“In your backpack, there is a copy of Jeremy’s class schedule. You’ve been enrolled as Simon Jones into the school.” You were sick on the first day of class. Nothing really happens on the first day anyway. I will intervene as little as possible from this point on. I’m afraid your poor observational skills are something only you can work out yourself. Good luck.” 

There was no smoke. There was no Mephistopheles, just his voice. Maybe he really did get a squip. 

The buses of the doors hissed open. Simon all but threw himself into the aisle. He remembered exactly where the calculus room was. He swiftly walked up the stairs in front of the building, thankful to still be conscious.


End file.
